Bradbury and Heinlein

How do you become a writer? Ray Bradbury (if you don’t know who he is go just… castrate yourself or something; really, you probably deserve it) had a simple response. His guide to writing was completely self-contained. There was no way you could follow his advice to the letter and not improve somewhat.

Universe at Large: How do you become a writer?
Bradburry: Write every day for a year.

Heinlein had five rules to writing speculative fiction, a fraction of which are applicable here. I’ll list the first three.

1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.
3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.

I do my best to write every day but this isn’t always feasible. I have a job that keeps me from when I wake up until six in the evening, which requires a half-hour commute. I have a significant other. I have a cat. I have an apartment that needs cleaning, frequently. Books to read, games to play, friends to see. Moreover, I have a 10pm bedtime. Call me spoiled in that last bit of trivia, but I am cranky as a five-year-old without that sleep.

I can’t write at work. I’ve tried. I write pen-and-paper first which may slow the process, but in the end I’m far more cautious over each word I select which improves the output, if only marginally. My writing is better than my blogging (not difficult to conceive I’m sure).

Moreover, tonight I’m – apparently – orchestrating a birthday party. It only requires the aggregation of Sloppy Joes and yellow cake (and alcohol which I cannot consume due to recent oral piercing), but being notified at noon-thirty the day of means a lot more cleaning than I wanted to do. And I was looking forward to tackling The Trial tonight. (Kafka, for those less inclined.)

No more! My resolution as of now – no pathetic waiting for an arbitrary Gregorian timestamp – is to write three hundred words a day. Three hundred. That’s all. Just a hair over a double-spaced page in OpenOffice. The trick here, for myself, is to not only get into the habit of writing every day, rain or shine, but to have the breathing room to pause over previous work and edit.

The three hundred baseline is for those days that I stare at the blinking cursor hating everything, at all, ever. No matter what, I can at least squeeze that much out, even if it’s something I delete the next day. So long as I put something down, and tried, I can call it time well spent.

And this small scratching of verbage won’t interfere so much with my having an existence outside of work, which I’m sure those other entities in my life appreciate. Except the cat. She loves sitting on my lap when I write.

As I wrote this, I overheard someone order a pizza to be delivered to work. Good Lord, that sounds delicious. Steady, Morgan. Maintain.

Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy – This Lamb Sells Condos

Of course Owen Pallett had to dub his solo project Final Fantasy. He couldn’t make it easy to find his music on YouTube between edits of the games to play up the epic romance of Tidus and Yuna – or of Rikku and Yuna, depending how your tastes roll – usually set to Utada Hikaru or Evanescence.

Owen Pallett, if you recognize the name but have no idea where from, is the man responsible for the strings of The Arcade Fire. He does that here, while singing. Apparently seeing him live, an honor I’ve yet to have bestowed upon mine head, is awesome. Just from videos I can see that. Great crowd interaction, and I love seeing artists record and loop live. It’s just fun to watch.

And although the above song, and corresponding video are amazing, the song below is actually what got me listening more. He opens by saying, “Thanks for not asking if this is The Dream Of Win And Regine.” That, and He Poos Clouds all have videos.

Final Fantasy – This Modern Love (Bloc Party cover)

STEFAN: Was it you who got me into Owen Pallett?

ME: You’re welcome.

STEFAN: Yeah, that was awesome how you did that.

Also would like to add that this pleases me. A good deal of my favorites are on there.

Watchmen Photos

I was originally intended on writing a giant blog post about politics and how I appreciated Obama’s directness about his prior drug use, and how this should be lauded as an example of bold honesty in the face of so much vile vilification and puerile posturing. (Writing that was delicious.)

But then this showed its ass up and I couldn’t ignore it.

There were some fun facts listed, too:

• 5,800 feet of neon requiring 24,000 watts of power
• 100 unique and custom-designed graphics created for the various storefronts
• 5,000 square feet of custom posters
• Street had to work for 1938, 1945, 1953, 1957, 1964, 1974, 1975, 1977, and 1985
• 1,040 feet of 1:1 scale New York streets
• 98,400 square feet of exterior scenery
• 12,500 square feet of interior scenery
• Building heights range from 23′9″ to 42′6″
• 10,325 16-foot 2×4s
• 3,600 sheets of OSB (plywood-like construction material)
• 384,000 square feet of foam brick
• 200,000 nails
• 3,500 tubes of construction adhesive
• 160,000 lbs. of steel I-beams support the facades
• 300 cubic meters of concrete
• 6,000 square feet of glass
• 4,800 square feet of plexiglass
• 20,000 donuts were consumed by the construction crew
• 20,000 gallons of water and 3,000 gallons of Gatorade was drunk by the crew

The first response from my buddy Jason was, “So many donuts. I want that many donuts.”

The images, in case you don’t care to follow the link:

ME: The last foto became my background.

JASON: Nnnhuuuuurrrrddddd.

ME: Says the guy with a WoW background on a laptop he got primarily to play WoW on the go?

JASON: Hey, I’m doing homework right now.

Difficult Youth

The more I think on my youth, the more I am surprised I’ve survived as long as I have.

My parents are tiny eastern Europeans, and you should understand that as far as parental relationships, I had more in common with my Asian and Indian friends than I did with my more western friends. Eastern Europeans are hard, bitter people, hard working, self-doubting, and mistrusting of compliments. They demand their children respect them absolutely, and do not do very well in the face of rampant insubordination (as what was offered by me).

They fled when Poland declared martial law. They spent a year or more rolling around central Europe, trying to scratch out a living while awaiting acceptance into the US as political refugees. My mother was a physician. My father was a PhD in electrical engineering. She cleaned houses and he dug wells. You do what you must. They struggled, and made it to America, to give their one, single, solitary child all the opportunities they never had.

And this is what they got.

I managed to graduate college, although by the skin of my teeth. I actually sneaked into the graduation ceremony for the year I was intended to graduate in, which is a story unto itself – rambling and uninteresting, but I amused myself with my own fast talking. Bachelor’s in engineering (minor in philosophy, my pride in which is due to the fact that I’m an engineer who can actually communicate) which is really nothing to sneeze at, although I could have applied myself. My epitaph will read “Could have become something if had only applied self.”

Despite my present on-paper success (steady job, own apartment, self-sustaining, relatively healthy) I am still a trial, a fact made fresh this Sunday when I put a new hole in my head. This brings me to seven piercings, and this one is in the lip, so it’s particularly audacious. I drink, I have smoked although I am not a smoker, I hung out with the ‘wrong crowd’ for the bulk of my life. To be fair, that’s a rather cruel statement on my mother’s part: she’s stunned that I would be good friends with an actor or artist-types. I wonder how she would swing with my father’s side, considering we have actors, musicians, artists, and the like. (No writers.)

I was injured a great deal of my childhood. I played rough and thought I was invincible. The latter has yet to be proven to the contrary although I’ve yet to really put it to the test. For several years it was dubious whether I would survive the day, merely due to how often I came home with new bandages or bruises.

Add this to the fact that I screamed and cried as an infant. I was a loud baby. I wanted my presence known, and in very angry manners.

For this, I thank my parents. Not for the gifts they have given me in life, simultaneously many and few, but for the fact that they didn’t kill me. I am an only child and accident-prone. You really think they couldn’t have made that look like an accident? How easy it would have been for me to – whoops! – fall down the stairs or out of a tree (both of which have actually happened to me on more than one occasion). You, too, should muse on how difficult you were for your parents – if indeed you were difficult – and thank them for not killing you. If nothing else, the reaction is worth it.

“Yes, ah,” my mother said to me with a weary sigh after my thanks. “You were not an easy child.”

I smiled at this. “Do you ever wish you had a different kid?”

Another sigh. “Well… you weren’t easy.”

Thanksgiving Rundown

I had a total of three Thanksgivings. This is what happens when you have too many people who are important to you, but not to one another.

Thanksgiving number one was more a Thanksgiving luncheon than anything. There was a good deal of awkward standing around and attempting to help on my part, along with the occasional sly dodge of politics. I always assume everyone else’s political views differ sharply from mine, and allow people to think they’re exactly the same. It’s not that I lie. I just don’t correct assumptions that work in my favor.

“Boys are smarter than girls.”

I looked up briefly, at Liam, an eight-year-old with Autism. High-functioning, but still autistic. The statement didn’t bother me, for what I hope are obvious reasons: he’s eight. When I was eight there were rhymes dedicated to the intellectual deficiency of the opposite sex. Ballads that spanned evenings in their telling, shared in merriment over mead and sweet meats. The rest of the table flipped out. I returned to my stuffing.

“Boys aren’t any smarter than girls are.”

“Yeah they are.” He bore the adamant conviction of Jan Crouch, with a similar facial expression. “It’s science. I read it in a book.”

Now I started laughing. His parents were frantically trying to convince him that no, boys were not smarter than girls, that they are the same, that some girls are smarter than some boys, and some boys are smarter than some girls. It’s different from person to person.

Liam was thoughtful about this barrage of new data. And this was all coming from his parents, the definitive source of all things Rational and True. They are a walking intellectual reservoir. “Well,” he says, slowly, piecing the logic together, “I guess a girl dog is smarter than a boy fish.”

Clearly. You have to pull back to the phylum to get distinctions in intelligence. It’s just science. Quickly following this came another conversation which ended in: “Thanks, Grandma. Thanks for reminding me about my lost childhood.”

Thanksgiving number deux saw my father incredibly drunk off of two cosmos. I pointed this out to my mother, who snapped at me, “Have you ever seen a grown man get drunk from two Cosmopolitans?” The answer to which is: yes, my father. In his attempt to explain to me the magic of ethanol and its stunning array of powers vis-a-vis one’s synapses, he started muttering something about the color before downing the rest of the shaker.

The third Thanksgiving was simple, with probably the moistest turkey I’ve eaten in my life. The Guitar Hero was epic. Everything else was simple. I destroyed the game in the face of the rest of the group’s button-pressing inadequacies. Someone yelled at me for beating their game before they did. I wish I had the self-preservation to be reticent, but Dragonforce came up on the screen shortly after.

Friday began as a different day. It ended in Everclear.

I discovered this and found it endearing, especially considering I’ve been unwittingly participating for the entirety of my life. Not as a protest statement or a desire to crush consumerism. I just hate crowds.

We are Scientists

We are Scientists – Inaction

Pop isn’t a crime, folks.

If you check out their site, you’ll find they are every bit as weird as the video indicates. All of their music is of that indie-pop type feel, with several songs that are just a bit out there. Not so far you can’t reach it, but just far enough that people like me can appreciate it. Songs with titles like ‘On the Nature of Empirical Truth’ which tell you that ‘dogs are smart but not like pigs are.’

I was aiming for some sort of ‘new music post every Friday’ schedule, but well. Friday I was AFK, and there’s nothing to be done for it. Not like its absence weighs heavily on my reading public. So, double-dose this week. Because I love sharing music.

Next one… I don’t know. Would the Eels be insulting? A friend who claimed to be a fanatic of All Things Indie Rock had never heard of them/him, so I’m not entirely certain how to treat a band that’s been on the scene since 1995. I feel it’d be like asking a movie buff if he’s heard of Kurosawa.

I’m thinking I’ll go with Final Fantasy.

Petty Bourgeois

I frequently despise how spoiled I’ve become.

I’m the one at the helm, you understand. The one with the credit card, the bank account, the income to support booking hotels, rental cars, et cetera. (Ignore the fact that I’m going to paying through the nose for this car rental; you hit one cop car…) Moreover, I’m the one with the responsibility to do these things. I chase things down. I mind the details. I finish what I start.

The ticket to ComicCon in my inbox, blissfully paid for and giving me passage to all days. I’ve found the hotel, and car rental, which will land our group $200 per person, total, for the whole weekend. This is because I am good at what I do.

Of course, I looked up reviews for the hotel. Not so great. I really can’t complain for $1000, for eight people, over four nights. But the thought of sleeping on an uncomfortable bed, or unclean sheets, or bathing under sketchy water, already has my skin crawling a little. I would be willing to pay more for soft sheets and pristine toilets. Those are booked. Even if they weren’t, I’d be flying solo due to cost.

I used to not mind. I used to be able to crash anywhere, curled up on a cement floor with nothing but my next day of clothing under me. Rock quarries in Mexico. Hidden corners of conventions. Five people piled onto one couch. And now, I just want a soft, warm bed where I can be spoiled into sleep.

Where the hell did my spirit of survival go?

I’m just glad one of us is going to have a driver’s license but be physically unable to consume alcohol. I have free reign to get obliterated. No one minds if you bring a coffee cup full of gin on the convention floor. Trust me, I’ve done this.

Get Me to the Church On Time

I got a call from a friend of mine from high school whom I’ve kept in touch with. Bear in mind that high school was not so much something I graduate from as something I escaped. Surmounted. I made jokes about it being like Auschwitz on regular intervals, which is a lot darker once you’ve seen the actual Auschwitz. The fact that they erected black wrought-iron gates around the whole thing really didn’t help dispel the comparison. Shortly after this call I had a wedding invitation in my mailbox.

I got my ass there, on time even. I’m really glad for the three other weddings I’ve had to attend in the past year, all of which were friends from high school or earlier, which led to a complete wedding-appropriate outfit. One less thing to be distraught over. The gift was easy too, God bless registries. I know the girl, but really, I have no sense of good crystal or how to approach her specific toasting needs.

I stumbled into the church gymnasium, decked out for a wedding. Red roses, white lights, and some sort of fabric that after some research I have found the name of: crinoline. Steak was served, so that was a plus, and the entire ceremony lasted fifteen minutes, another plus. I appreciate not having to sit through long ceremonies, having sat through multiple. But then, then, the questions started.

“Wow! I haven’t seen you in years!”

“Yeah, I know.” ‘I engineered it that way.‘

“How have you been?”

I shrugged. “Good. You?”

“Good! Oh, hey, doesn’t this make you miss high school?”

“Not really, no.”

They faltered. “But didn’t we have a blast?”

‘You and I?‘ I thought. “Maybe you. Graduation was a day of liberation for me.”

“Are you going to go to the reunion?”

“Spend a night hanging out with people I didn’t really like when I was younger and probably will react to my presence with the indifferent silence that I spent four years in?” I pause. Sometimes long sentences with big words slows people down. “Probably not.”

And then I spot the swollen bellies of impending childbirth walk around arm-in-arm with men smiling because they’re too dumb to realize what they’ve thrown away.

It’s not that I’m bitter or an elitist. It’s that I’m kind of selective. I had my friends. We could talk about anime, Star Wars, existentialism, Harry Potter, comic books, Faulkner, politics. I never gave a rats ass about who was hot, either in school or the celebrity world. I don’t care about having a ‘pimp’ ride, or how exactly to best attract the opposite sex. And I really, really hate small talk. I can do it. I’d just rather not.

Did I mention this was a Mormon wedding? In case you’re unaware of what this implies, I’ll spell it out: dry wedding. Dry. Wedding. Immediately following this shindig I got intimate with a bottle of Jameson and a copy of Evil Dead.

Actually, ironically enough, today’s Diesel Sweeties captured that exact feeling. I wish I could have read this before the wedding, so that when asked if I missed high school, I could retort with “Unlike you, I don’t confuse ‘The Breakfast Club’ with ‘Shawshank Redemption.’”

Architecture in Helsinki

Architecture in Helsinki – Hold Music

I was thinking of opening up with Muse, but if you haven’t heard of them by now, you fail. In fact, there are a plethora of bands I could have listed, but chose not to, for that reason. I feel saying bands like Shiny Toy Guns, The Decemberists, or Air might just be insulting. At the same time, maybe not.

Just the same. Architecture. Band from Australia. Probably the boppiest, happiest thing you’re likely to hear in a long time. I don’t see the point in any further writeup. The music is there.

Next week: probably We are Scientists. Because powerpop is not a crime.

No, Says the Man in Moscow

My office mate is in his fifties, divorced with two children, and someone whom I would characterize as highly responsible. I don’t expect the members of my Warcraft guild to epitomize restraint in any capacity, so when asking them whether my paycheck should be saved for bills, food, car repairs, and upcoming Christmas shopping, or blown on comic books and video games, I was entirely unsurprised at their response. My office mate, however, surprised me.

ME: So, I have a dilemma.

OM: Shoot.

ME: I just got paid. It’s a paycheck. It’s delicious. And I have things like rent, and bills, and Christmas shopping.

OM: Okay.

ME: Problem is, I also really want to play Assassin’s Creed, which not only requires buying the game, but buying the console as well. So the question becomes: do I be responsible or irresponsi–

OM: Irresponsible. Definately.

There was no conscious thought there. It was completely knee-jerk.

So, yesterday, I dropped half my paycheck on video games and comic books. I couldn’t swing Assassin’s Creed, being that it was sold out by the time I left work, but I did pick up Bioshock, which is really a trade-up anyway.

I think I’m going to add a Weekly Music Tidbit or Something Like That to this blog. I really am a music aficionado. That needs to shine through.